The present invention relates generally to the area of software and more specifically to generating automated business correspondences.
A major benefit of software applications is the reduction in time spent generating form documents. When a form document, such as a billing statement, is generated on a regular basis, it is extremely inefficient for a user to create and prepare all of the individual letters. Using a standard format, such as a form letter, and inserting data into designated form fields greatly reduces overhead costs associated with form documents and also increases user productivity.
Existing systems allow for the generation of form letters through the creation of a form letter template in a word processing environment. Within the word processing environment, typically a word processing software application, the form letter is then stored in an accessible directory. The word processing application retrieves and displays a selected form. Using internal coding, data entry fields may then be populated.
In one approach, a user is prompted with queues for entry of the missing data, such as a pop-up screen asking for a particular field of information, e.g., the address of the intended recipient. In another approach, the missing data may be retrieved from a business information database. In the example of an invoice, the database may include contact information and sales information.
Existing applications allow for the retrieval of this information and the insertion of this information within the form using a search and replace application program interface (API). Under the search and replace API, the data fields are replaced with the data from the database. Using the API approach using static pre-defined fields inserted in the form documents. These fields can not be adjusted in the event the formatting of the incoming information varies.
For example, the template may contain a pre-defined table have 3 columns and 10 rows. The API function searches and replaces data for all 30 fields, but if the original data contained 4 columns, all data from the fourth column would not be included in the letter.
In one example, the API searches for predefined terms associated with the fields. When the form document is created, the fields are given these designations within a template letter for use by the API. When doing the search and replace function, the API does not maintain the text formatting provided in the template. Therefore, not only does the API omit data outside of the predefined fields, it loses all textual formatting.
The data stored in the database, or spreadsheet, is acquired using a database software application. The data is formatted for the database software application and this formatting is inconsistent with the word processing application. More specifically, the search and replace API fails to translate the data from the database format to consistent formats usable by the word processor, and formats which have been defined in the letter template.
Therefore, form documents contain un-formatted database acquired data. For example, the contact information loses any font formatting and tables lose all tabular formatting. It is inefficient to then require a user to reformat the information. This prevents the production of multiple form documents, such as mass mailings. It also is extremely counterproductive to formatting benefits of the data, such as tabular data. For example, with a billing letter, a table may be used to indicate an account history or itemize an invoice. The tabular format is the most efficient application of this type of data and the format is used for storage within the database. The benefits of the database and tabular format are then lost when applied to form documents. Similarly, benefits may be lost regarding font specific formatting.
As such, there exists a need for generating automated business correspondences using database-formatted data in conjunction with word processor-formatted document templates.